Seen & Heard

Seen on Broadway:
The Mystery of Charles Dickens
, at the Belasco Theatre, is a lecture about the life of the novelist, given by Simon Callow. From time to time, Callow performs scenes from Dickens' novels, as did Dickens himself in a series of personal appearance tours near the end of his life. It's completely unclear to me why this is supposed to be a satisfying theatrical attraction; the script is by Peter Ackroyd, a noted Dickens biographer, but any episode of A&E's Biography is ...